Decreasing the rate of subscribing customers who are leaving for another mobile operator, i.e. churn rate, is currently an objective for most mobile operators in competitive markets with high mobile subscription penetration. In most markets, so called “loss leader” introductory offers are common in order to stimulate new subscribers to switch from their current mobile operator to a new mobile operator. Loss leader offers are often priced as cheap as possible and thus often contributes a loss with each sale. Consequently, replacing lost subscribers can negatively affect profitability of the mobile operator since loss leader offers may be needed. It is therefore of great interest to ensure the satisfaction of subscribers in a mobile network.
One significant component in increasing the subscriber satisfaction may be a dynamic and capable customer care function. A satisfied subscriber is less prone to switch mobile operator. The customer care is the primary interface towards the subscriber when problems arise. Thus, the capability of the customer care may be of importance in keeping the subscriber satisfied which in the prolongation may lead to a decreased churn rate.
The likelihood of solving a subscribing customer's issue at the customer care function strongly depends on the available information which is associated with the subscriber, i.e. it is important that the customer care function can access recent, accurate and relevant call and account history. In fact, the vast majority of issues handled by customer care are related to the most recent events.
With reference to FIG. 1, which is block chart showing a network architecture according to the prior art, account and call history in relation to customer care will now be described.
Terminals 101,102,103 are present in cells associated with radio base stations 100a, 100b in the access network 105. The radio base stations 100a, 100b are connected to a radio base station controller 111 which is arranged in connection with the core network 113. Network events, taking place in the access network 105, the core network 113 or in the Business Support System (BSS) 120 e.g. in the billing and rating system 124, are provided to a data warehouse 121. The network events may be represented by Call Data Records (CDR). Typically, CDRs for multiple customers are stored in a file in an interim position within the core network 113. The file, containing the CDRs, is then typically sent to the data warehouse 121 at certain intervals.
When an agent 124 of a customer care unit 123 wants to fetch the account and call history, the customer care unit 123 requests, from the data warehouse 121, a list of the most recent network events associated with the subscriber. The customer care unit 123 will then receive a data set comprising the network event data for said subscriber, available at that moment in the data warehouse.
Using the customer care unit 123 as described above, the customer care unit agent 124 will have to actively fetch the network event data from the data warehouse 121 to acquire the most recent network events. Therefore, the customer care unit agent 124 only has a snapshot of the network event history which may be insufficient to solve the customer's 125 issue which may need evaluation of events over a longer period as well as ongoing events.
The only way for the customer care unit agent to ensure that the most recent events are presented is to continuously poll the system. Having one or more customer care agents continuously polling the customer care unit and the data warehouse in parallel will lead to a high, in some cases critical, system load. Even more importantly, using the prior art system of FIG. 1 may not enable the customer care unit agent to acquire sufficient information in order to solve the customer's issue.